This statement forms a part of what I am
calling,
The Dortmund Hearings, which commenced in 1962 and ran on for several
years. This particular hearing was used to try and determine the involvement and
guilt (if any) of Otto Erich Kahn, who had been the second-in-command during the
attack on Oradour-sur-Glane. It was also the intention to discover the
involvement of Lammerding, the Das Reich commander and to see if his actions
warranted his prosecution and / or extradition to France over the affair.

This particular statement has been
paraphrased from the original document, which was obtained from the German
National Archives on the understanding that it would not be directly copied or
distributed. All such documents will be displayed here as paraphrased translations
and will give all the necessary facts without having been directly copied from
the originals. I appreciate that some people may find this unsatisfactory, but I
was only allowed access to the documents by agreeing to this condition. I assure
you that what follows below is an accurate rendition of the content of the
statement. Should the situation change in the future then the full translated
version will appear here in place of the paraphrased version. For comments on
this statement, see the foot of this page and notes made in italics throughout.

All these statements were taken by
means of a face-to-face interview between the subject and a Prosecuting
Attorney, with a Justice Secretary present to take a transcript of the
proceedings.

Comments are in italics.

This statement made at Münster on 2nd January
1964, is just 5 pages, and is thus considerably shorter than Kahn's first at
Dortmund in 1962, which ran to 19 pages. This new
statement consists in the main, of Kahn re-iterating his previous evidence and
denying evidence from other people, such as Stadler, Werner and Gerlach which
contradicted him in certain aspects. Kahn was adamant that his earlier statement
was correct and especially that he had not told Gerlach that they had
been shot at near the boundary of Oradour, but that they had (probably) heard
shots in the distance. He was unsure where these shots came from or who fired
them. Kahn also denied that he had accompanied Diekmann to Limoges and in fact
this was probably confusion on the part of the other witnesses withErwin Dagenhardt, who
seemingly acted as Diekmann's driver that day.

Surprisingly,
Kahn mentioned that Diekmann had told him of two places to, "burn down" that
day, but he could not now remember the name of the other place! Kahn said that
he had spoken to the most senior platoon leader present (who was Heinz Barth)
and told him not to take any such action (very, very strange, an SS officer
telling his junior SS officer to ignore the orders of their joint commander).
Kahn also said that he knew Barth had been wounded, but did not know if he had
survived the war. In fact Barth was living under his own name in Gransee and was
to stand trial in East Germany in 1983 some 6 years
after Kahn died of natural causes.

Kahn mentioned
the wounding of the officer by the explosion at the church and says he could not
understand why Boos was stating things the way he was, especially concerning the
destruction of Oradour. Kahn commented on men whom he knew to have fallen in
action and said that he cannot remember the names of many others, or knew what
has happened to them post-war. He also said that he could not remember saying
anything to Okrent about finding ammunition or explosives in the village.

In conclusion,
Kahn said again that he stood by his earlier statement. He said that he could no
longer remember why he had not mentioned in it the order to annihilate two
villages and not just Oradour.

Throughout
this statement Kahn spells Diekmann as, "Dieckmann", or at least the
secretary typing the notes does so. This misspelling of Diekmann's name is a
feature of the post-war investigations into Oradour and it is a bit of a puzzle.
The name can be spelled several ways, Diekmann, Dieckmann, Dickmann and Dikmann
have all appeared in statements. When a name can be spelled in different ways,
normally more care is taken to ensure that the right spelling is used. However
either this care was absent, or people were unsure after the passage of time,
just how it was spelled in this case.